The front page of MSNBC at the time of this writing features SARS, the war, and the fact that Toshiba has improved its pocket PC. That is to say, on the list of important things which have happened recently, the complete mapping of the human genome, an unconscionably huge advance toward the future of medicine and biotechnology, rates somewhere on the scale of importance BELOW the fact that Roy Williams left the Kansas University Jayhawks to coach college basketball in North Carolina.

This is pretty much proof as much as you can get that news has officially become a source of entertainment, and it's free not to take broadcast journalism (or its internet counterpart) any more seriously than you would take "Joe Millionaire." When the war in Iraq is shown with essentially the same CG effects and announcer intonation as Battle Bots, it's safe to say that people have either become desensitized to the horrors of war, or people are just being Somafied into actually believing all the Hero/Liberator rhetoric. Either one is horrifying in its own way. Thoughts?